EnglandReplica longbow from England, Europe. Made by Woolwich armourer, Mr. R. Warry. Purchased by the Museum in 1893.

This is an exact model in yew wood of an old English longbow (length: 6 foot, 4.5 inches) that was recovered from the 'Mary Rose', Henry VIII's warship that sank at Portsmouth in 1545.

A Place in History

This replica of a Tudor-period English longbow was commissioned by Henry Balfour, and carved by a Mr. R. Warry, an armourer based at Woolwich, and purchased by the Museum on January 28th, 1893. It is carved from a single stave of Spanish Yew, the finest European bow wood. One of the principal characteristics of yew wood is the marked structural difference between the white heartwood and the reddish sapwood, which leads to the yew's peculiar characteristic of bleeding red when cut. While both are extremely elastic, the sapwood is best suited to withstanding deformation under tensile stress, and the heartwood under compression. Consequently, the correct stave for a longbow is cut to bisect the division between these two zones within the tree's section so that the heartwood forms the rounded cross-section of the belly and the sapwood forms the slightly flattened back.

This bow's manufacture was based on measurements taken by Major Orde Brown from longbows salvaged from the Mary Rose. The Mary Rose was Henry VIII's favourite flagship, which foundered and sank during an engagement with the French in Portsmouth Harbour on July 19th, 1545. Although pioneering divers salvaged some pieces of the wreck in the 19th century, the ship itself was not raised until 1982. The arms retrieved from the Mary Rose include the majority of historical English longbows in existence. Judging from the inventory of the similarly massive flagship of the same period, Henri Grâce à Dieu ("Great Harry"), it is likely that the Mary Rose carried something in the order of 100 longbows.

The longbow's distinctive qualities - its size, great range (up to 300 metres) and power - are often attributed as the cause of English victories during the Hundred Years War at Crecy (1346) and Agincourt (1415). However, recent historical interpretations appear to suggest that the bow's effectiveness was just as dependent on the organisation, skills and strength of the men using it. Like all self bows, the draw weight of the longbow increases exponentially as one draws the string back, until reaching its full draw, at a maximum of 75-80 lbs. This is way beyond the abilities of most inexperienced archers to achieve and hold, and Elizabethan observers often bemoaned the lack of practice and skill of England's Tudor bowmen in comparison to their forebears 200 years earlier. However, there is evidence that the Mary Rose archers had trained since childhood since many of the soldier skeletons found had thicker bones in the right arm and a deformed right shoulder joint.

The origin of the English longbow has been much debated - some argue that it was actually a Welsh weapon, first recorded in military use in Gwent in South Wales in the 12th century. Adding weight to this is the fact that the Bayeux Tapestry, chronicling evens leading upto the Norman Invasion of England in 1066, shows neither Anglo-Saxons nor Normans carrying bows more than four feet long. Set against this theory is archaeological fact. Neolithic grave goods excavated at Meare Heath in Somerset included a longbow of yew, fully two metres in length and very similar in form to the medieval longbow, albeit somewhat wider and flatter across the belly. This bow was radiocarbon-dated to 2600 BC. It seems, therefore, that the longbow was a British weapon long before either England or Wales existed.

After a series of humiliating defeats at the hands of the Spaniards in the Netherlands in the late 16th century, the re was something of a smear campaign within the English army against the longbow. The Spaniards had used 'The New Discipline' - a coordinated army of pikemen and musketeers - to devastating effect against the English army of bills and longbows. Although this had largely been due to the lack of training and disorganisation of the English army, its officers placed the blame upon the enemy's better weapons. The perceived modernity of the musket and harquebus, and the dawning realisation that the bow was also a weapon of savages and infidels meant that the bow was almost immediately phased out in preference for firearms. By 1600, several thousand bowyers and fletchers were destitute.

Perversely, the late 16th-century harquebus only had an effective range of 8-10 meters, could not penetrate as well as an arrow and could only be loaded and fired 3 times in two minutes. A practised longbowman could fire 12 arrows in the same time. Bizarrely, as late as Napoleonic Wars some 200 years later, English officers were still bemoaning the inefficiency of the musket relative to the longbow, and calling for its reinstatement. It was only the development of the cartridge, the percussion cap, and rifling in the mid-19th century, which finally improved firearm technology beyond the longbow's capacities